"How Are the Mighty Fallen" given 6/28/15

            King Saul was not an evil man. He never really even set out to be King in the first place. Saul was a dark and moody man, a brooding, flawed ruler--almost Nixon-esque to our eyes. Yet he began his rule with great promise.  Early on, he won great victories for Israel, and received considerable honor and glory, both from the hand of his people, and from the hand of his God.  But, by the time he died by his own hand, Saul had experienced failures as a military leader, as a king, as a father, as a man.

            Jonathan on the other hand, is portrayed in the Scripture as the epitome of nobility and loyalty. He manages to be loyal to his friend and lover, David, saving him from Saul's wrath. And yet Jonathan also manages to be ultimately loyal to his father Saul. 

            This, despite the fact that Jonathan knows David is Saul's rival. This, despite the fact that Jonathan knows that David has been secretly anointed by the Prophet Samuel, and is the one man who stands between him and the throne of Israel.  In the end, his love for David meant more to Jonathan than a crown. “A love surpassing the love of women.”

            Their story is a tragedy in the classic sense. To our modern eyes, neither Saul nor Jonathan committed any sins remotely deserving of the sad fate they ultimately suffered. Saul overstepped his bounds as King a couple of times-- once out of impatience, and the other time out of what to our modern eyes would actually seem honorable behavior.  For that he earned the curse of the Prophet Samuel and, supposedly, the withdrawal of God's blessing.  Jonathan on the other hand, simply did his best to stand by his father.  In the end, that loyalty, and his duty to his nation meant more to Jonathan than life itself.

            At the news of their deaths in battle, David grieved. Ironically, possibly for Saul, but no doubt genuinely for his dear friend. "How are the mighty fallen?" David asks in his beautiful and touching  lament.  Notice.  This is not a specifically religious poem-- even though it's in the Bible.  The God of Israel is not mentioned.  This is the outcry of a troubled spirit. This is an outpouring of grief and loss.  But it's more than that.  It's also a poem that says a great deal about David the man, and about humanity in general.

            "How are the mighty fallen," David cries out. "Why are the mighty fallen?" David seems to be asking that question as well. "Why?", "How?" Those are questions for us, as well. We ask them about Saul in this morning's worship.

            But these are not merely questions about someone who lived four or five thousand years ago. From Richard III, to Richard Nixon, to Winnie Mandela, from O.J. Simpson, to Bill Clinton, we can see these questions repeated over and over again in human lives, down throughout history. These questions have a power and poignancy for us in our age as well.

            Why should an apparently well intentioned, highly talented, sincere person, catapulted into a position of power and prestige, have his or her early, brilliant, efforts suddenly overshadowed because of a flaw in their personality? Or even by a single misstep? Why should a life be disgraced and ruined by a single act under the influence of urges or actions that cannot, even for just a moment, be controlled?

            Why are some promising people afflicted by evil spirits, or mental illness, or manic-depressive tendencies, or bipolarity, or paranoia, or jealous rages, or whatever it was you wish to call that which bedeviled these women and men? Why have so many promising, good young men amd women been killed on so many battlefields down through the ages?  Why are some people abused and beaten by partners who honestly think that they love them?  Why do the victims tolerate it? Why are the parents of young children senselessly killed?  Why does God at times seem to be mute before our most ardent prayers?

            Why did my friend get AIDS?  Why did my spouse get Cancer? Why do the good suffer?  What do I make out of all this?  How do I go on-- when going on itself seems futile?  What kind of world is this? Why is life like this? How have the mighty fallen?  Where's the justice in all of poor old Saul's sufferings? Where's the justice in noble Jonathan's dying?

            The common belief in Israel was that Saul was being punished.  Saul had offended God.  But what really happened was that, Saul offended the Prophet Samuel when he impatiently made a sacrifice to God that should have been Samuel's prerogative.  Later, Saul refused to execute some P.O.W.s, who Samuel, invoking God's name, had commanded be killed.

            For this, Saul was cursed and forsaken by God-- according to the conventional wisdom.  For this, Samuel anointed young David as king-- behind Saul's back.  For this, the God of Israel refused to heed Saul's prayers.  For this, it was belived, God sent an evil spirit of madness to torment Saul.

            As for Jonathan, he should not have sided with his father after God's blessing of Saul was withdrawn.

            That's how everybody saw it. Undoubtedly Samuel saw it that way. Certainly the anonymous scribes who copied down the court history of King David saw it that way.  Certainly the rabbis who conserved that history and edited it into the form we currently have before us, saw it that way. Probably, poor old Saul saw it that way, and believed that God really had stopped listening to his prayers.

            But I wonder if David saw it that way. I wonder if the author of this lament would worship a God who sends mental illness as a punishment for stepping on the privileges of a tardy prophet.  I wonder if the author of this morning's Psalm 130 "Out of the Depths", would worship a God who turns a deaf ear to the prayers of a man, because he refused to massacre unarmed prisoners. 

            I wonder if the author of the Twenty-Third Psalm could believe that the Divine Shepherd would allow the killing of a good man like Jonathan in retribution for his father's sins.  That wasn't David's God-- and it's not my God-- and I hope it's not your God, either.

            There are, as more and more prominent Theologians are beginning to assert, some traditional beliefs that simply have to be rejected-- because they are a sheer affront to our reason and consciences. Even if those beliefs can claim some authority from Scripture or history, we still must reject them, as products of a more savage time. We still must reject them, as reflections of a more primitive understanding of the nature of the Godhead.

            We do not in our day and age, sell disobedient children into slavery as the OT commands. (If we did, none of our kids would get past adolescence!)  We do not in our day and age, stone people to death for their sexual orientation, or for working on the Sabbath, or eating shellfish, or wearing two different fabrics at the same time. (Imagine, a wool suit worn with a cotton shirt, a silk tie would be a death warrant. I have no idea what the Torah would make of polyesther!)

            God does not punish us for the sins of our parents.  God does not command us to murder the innocent or the helpless. God does not use fate, or enemies, or accidents, or illness, or madness, or death as a punishment for us in this world. Our God is a gracious, a loving Creator.  The God of Jesus Christ is a forgiving God.

            When Jesus walked the earth, He fed the hungry, He healed the sick, He gave sight to the blind, He cured the lame. Scripture tells us that He raised from the dead the son of a widow, His own dear friend Lazarus, and a little girl, the daughter of Jairus.

            Quite clearly, Jesus did not think of accidents, or illness, or infirmities, or death, or tragedy as God's Will. Jesus saw these things as among the facts of our broken existence that He came to overcome. It is clearly and simply a fact of life that tragedies do occur, that good people suffer, that the innocent die.  Sometimes that's simply the way the world is-- there's no denying it. Life is difficult. Life is not fair.

            Suffering, tragedy, and pain however, do not come to us as punishment, as afflictions from the devil, or even as a test.  Sometimes these things come to us as consequences—either of our own sin, or that of another. Most of the time though, these things simply come to us as consquences of the broken, incomplete, imperfect nature of life on this planet.  As Job observed in the midst of his afflictions, "The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike."

            Life, with all it's circumstances-- with all its pain and joy simply comes to us. Life is what all of us upon this earth make it together.  When the Creator gave us the world to keep it was a free gift-- with no strings. You and I must take the good along with the bad. We have life and the freedom to make of it what we will. We may do the best we can, but our own flawed, incomplete natures are directly reflected in the broken-ness, the blind suffering and cruelty of life.

            God will not remake the world for our convenience. But our God has promised to celebrate the goodness of living along with us and sustain us through the tragic times. The loneliness, the sadness, the trials and tears-- can all be borne because Jesus is among us, suffering with us, weeping alongside us-- even as he wept at the side of the grave of his friend, Lazarus.

            Jesus wept. The shortest verse in the Bible. Yet it holds the promise that we need not bear our griefs alone, our sorrows alone, our tears alone. Jesus shares them with us. Jesus wept-- for Lazarus, for Mary and Martha his mourning sisters. Jesus wept for the poor, the oppressed, the maimed, the wasted lives, the mentally ill. Jesus wept for all the victims of senseless violence, for the battered women, the fatherless child, the young man cut off in his prime. Jesus wept-- for you and for me.

            Jesus wept for what Paul called a universe the groans like a woman in labor. Jesus wept for a universe, a world, a life that for all of us must sometimes seem to echo with loneliness and meaningless-ness as like Saul, we call out to God and seem to get no answer. Jesus wept and suffered on the cross for us.

            And this is the wonderful thing about Jesus, that in Him, we need never again, weep alone. In Him is strength. In Him is grace and new life. In Him is God's answer to our prayers, God's response to our tragedies, God's reaching out to us in to our pain.

            The pain will not go away completely, of course. But there is a comfort there, in knowing that in even in the depths, even in the valley of the shadow of death-- Another weeps with us, Another walks alongside us, Another holds us in His arms.

            But there is yet a greater comfort available yet for those who believe.  Let us not forget.  The Jesus who shares our grief and pain, the Jesus who weeps alongside us, is the same Jesus who called Lazarus from the grave, the same Jesus who raised Jairus' daughter from death, the same Jesus who conquered death on the cross.

            "Why are you weeping?" He asked. "The child is not dead. She is just sleeping." Though it does not explain the suffering and injustice of this world, though it does not make the pain of loss or grief disappear--in that affirmation, in that act of compassionate healing, in that resurrection, lies the believer's ultimate hope and the mourner's deepest comfort. Amen.